We’re collating the images cause neither of them is very big on their own, but here’s your first look at Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator” and Mike Goldbach’s “Daydream Nation.” Update: We have larger images of both films.
Let’s start off with Redford’s civil war drama, “The Conspirator” which stars James McAvoy and Robin Wright (who you can see above) and a stellar supporting cast that includes Kevin Kline, Evan Rachel Wood, Tom Wilkinson, Alexis Bledel, Justin Long, Toby Kebbell, Danny Huston, Johnny Simmons, Colm Meaney and Stephen Root. We showed you some set photos earlier this year, some more production stills and reviewed the script too. Here’s the extended synopsis:
While an angry nation seeks vengeance, a young union war hero must defend a mother accused of aiding her son in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
Having just returned victorious to Washington D.C. from the closing battles of the Civil War, Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy), a Union war hero and idealistic lawyer, is eager to make his name in politics. A bright-eyed nationalist, he is thrilled when he gets an audience with Lincoln’s secretary of war, Edwin Stanton (Kevin Kline), at a high society party. However, the meeting is cut short when a shot fired in Ford’s Theatre from the gun of John Wilkes Booth changes everything.
With the nation mobilized to hunt down those responsible for the assassination, the authorities find Mary Surratt (Robin Wright), mother of John Surratt, suspected of collaborating with Booth. A Confederate sympathizer and devoted mother, Mary refuses to reveal the location of her son. Whipped up into an emotional fury, the public calls for her blood. On the insistence of his mentor, former attorney general Reverdy Johnson (Tom Wilkinson), Aiken reluctantly takes up her case and defends this collaborator in front of a military tribunal. If she refuses to give up her son, her penalty will be death. Unwilling to allow her constitutional rights to be violated in the name of a verdict nearly every American demands, the young lawyer must take on the most difficult case of his life. Redford never dwells on recent parallels, but the story certainly resonates with events of the past decade. Wisely, The Conspirator leaves conclusions to each viewer.
The film runs 122 minutes, was lensed by Newton Thomas Sigel and is a bit of an early treat as we expected it sometime in 2011 (though as far as we know it has no distributor yet).
“Daydream Nation” is the debut feature film of Mike Goldbach, a Canadian filmmaker known for co-writing Don McKellar’s second feature film, “Childstar.” The film stars Kat Dennings, Reece Thompson, Andie MacDowell and Josh Lucas. The synopsis:
A young woman (Kat Dennings) is uprooted to a small town where her classmates seem permanently stoned, an industrial fire burns in the background and a killer preys on the populace.
Only sixteen years old, Caroline Wexler is facing a teenager’s nightmare: her widowed father has moved from the city to a tiny, nowhere town where the major tourist attraction is an industrial fire that seems destined to burn forever and everyone under the age of nineteen is permanently stoned. Concocting new ways of getting high is a major hobby for most of Caroline’s classmates, including the lovelorn Thurston (Reece Thompson), who falls for Caroline the minute he lays eyes on her. And then there’s the minor inconvenience of a killer running around the neighborhood. What’s a girl to do but start an affair with the most available teacher at school?
Visually arresting, slyly funny and boasting its share of chills, Daydream Nation is a smart debut from Mike Goldbach (who co-wrote Childstar). An astute account of adolescent confusion and angst, the film exposes the wide rift between the adult and the adolescent worlds. No parent really knows how out of control their children are, but the adults in this world don’t seem to possess more maturity than their juniors.
The oddly-toned trailer (which you can only see on the TIFF site) does feature this writer’s #1 song of the year so far which is Beach House’s “Walk In the Park” so that makes up for it. It also features a song by Metric singer Emily Haines. Both films premiere this fall at the Toronto International Film Festival which runs September 9-19. [TIFF/TIFF]